All well and good, but when you buy that second hand Ford Fircone and find that it's not compatible with the current iPhad 8, you're a bit stuffed?

There's "must do 'cos it's trendy" and there's automotive design. One thinks of obsolescence in months, the other in decades.

Now, if we had a standard, fully-featured interface[1] and set of APIs across all phones, we might be going somewhere here. However, as differentiation and lock-in is the lifeblood of the phone industry (and the only thing that keeps Apple in business at all), you will grow old and die waiting for that to happen.

Personally I happen to like the integrated approac. Not being dependant on having ${device} on me and having to festoon the inside of the car with cables, suckers and holders is a major plus in my book.

[1] We were sooo nearly there with USB, then Apple came up with their proprietary "dock" connector and scuppered us.

"There will always be a small niche for built in systems but I'd lay good money that the iphone/Android etc integration into car hifi's will continue much further and at increasing speed."

Why would I prefer the relatively piddly screen size of smart phone to the large integrated display fitted to my car? This is perfectly placed, free from glare and displays a host of other car info as well and is operated from the steering wheel controls. Also, announcements from the integrated system mute the car entertainment system. I also have a usb storage device, containing my whole music library, in the car which is integrated into the car system.

I cannot see why I would ever want to use my phone to replace all of this.

My friend works in high end electronics and told me a couple of years that he had seen a demonstration of 3D Sat nav. It worked on the same principle of a head up display but instead of the image you have on a normal sat nav you had a large arrow which appeared near the front of your bonnet showing you which way to go.

He said it was much easier to use than a normal sat nav

Apparantly they had nearly perfected the technology but need to clear the legalities of it.

Google satnav is good but having to connect to the Internet is a pain in some locations. CoPilot works rather well for around £20 from Android market and doesn't need live Internet.

One of the car manufactures will break ranks at some point and offer inbuilt sat-nav as a reasonable price or pretty much standard fit. Toyota tried it a while back on the Avensis but that just pointed with arrows on a B&W screen. Mitsubishi did a talking system when they launched the Colt but they took that out rather quickly.

Look out for some sat nav software called Sygic. It works for multiple OS's and most smart phones. It's not to pricey and all the maps are stored locally on the phone, so no data charges and no loss of maps due to poor reception.

Its also very easy to use, and very well intergrated with the phones contact/address book.